In an effort to gather more revenue, Shazam, the music discovery app that most of us use when we want to know the name of a new song, wants to integrate a feature that will allow users to scan an image, that has the Shazam logo on it.
This new feature is Shazam`s take on augmented reality which has been a growing areas for apps in the past few years. It is also a way for Shazam to get back on the profit side of the business and thanks to investors in this idea, they already have a starting capital of $30 million.
The investors chose to remain anonymous, but Shazam has disclosed the fact that the new investors now hold 3% of the company`s shares, thus revealing that Shazam`s true worth is at a staggering $1 billion.
Thanks to the new feature added by Shazam, users will be able to scan a movie poster or the picture of a product they are interested in and then they will be redirected towards the movie`s trailer or ot the retailing site where the product is being marketed.
Shazam also signed with a number of companies who desire to have their products marketed on the app, among them Levi`s, Disney and Target. However, this isn`t the only way Shazam plans on gathering up more profits. They have also signed advertising agreements with Spotify and other companies.
This search for new revenue sources comes after the downloading music service has stopped producing the large amount of profit that it once did. Now, the company gets most of its money from Apple’s iTunes online store, from people who download a song after finding it on Shazam.
Rich Riley, Shazam`s C.E.O , has explained the benefits that adding this new feature on their app, brings to both the user as well as the company who is marketing their products, by offering some meaningful statistics.
He said that on average, a person uses only 25 apps a month and even though they might download a new app, to see how it works, most users remain loyal to the apps that they have grown accustomed to. Shazam is an app that has more the 100 million users and as such, it makes sense to try to advertise your products to such a large database. The new feature will also be user friendly, because only those interest in the product or the movie, will do the scaning to find out more about the product.
Although they have yet to make a profit from this new feature, Shazam hopes that this augmented reality feature, will help them get back the profit they once had.
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